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Friday, September 4, 2009

A whole head of cabbage has been sitting in my fridge for quite some time. Some of the outer leaves were unusable by now. So, I thought it would be a good time to finally use it before the whole thing goes rots. I immediately thought about korean pancakes. Those nicely fried but light seafood pancakes that I get from K-Town are so good. I read that the key is tonic water in the batter. I wanted to try it out. My version included cabbage, garlic chives, jalapenos, and canadian bacon. First, I chop up the cabbage. I use the whole head because it's going to be good filler. And it shrinks when cooked. I put that into a hot skillet with oil, salt, and pepper. I cooked the leaves until tender. I also chop up the other ingredients. The chives are chopped into smaller pieces. The jalapenos are deseeded and sliced. The canadian bacon is sliced into strips. Next, I mix up the batter. I use all purpose flour, eggs, and a small bottle of tonic water. Mix until all lumps disappear. I also add a generous amount of soysauce for salt and flavor. When everything is prepped, I use the same skillet and heat up some oil. I add the meat, then jalapenos, then chives. I cook until just bright green. Then, I add the cooked cabbage and mix until everything is mixed well. I pour some of the batter into the pan to make a giant pancake. I was thinking frittata style. Unfortunately, this was a bad idea. The pancake took a long while to cook. And it was too heavy. I couldn't flip it. It turned out to be more like hash then anything else. Fail! Good thing I had some ingredients left. I tried a different method this time. First, I cooked the meat and veggies. Then add them to the raw batter. I mix until everything is incorporated. Lastly, I add the savory batter mix into the pan little by little. Thus, I was creating smaller pancakes. This worked out much better. They were easy to cook and flipped easily. The pancakes are really good. The batter is slightly salty with a small soysauce taste. The vegetables retained their crunchiness. The jalapenos give them a nice kick once in awhile. And the canadian bacon adds the nice meatiness. In the future, I had to cook these savory pancakes in smaller batches. And I'll omit the eggs. The batters wasn't very light. In fact, they were heavy like American pancakes. Also, I think I would add a dipping sauce too. Maybe a soy sauce aioli. Upper Meadows Farm 12 Pollara Lane Montague, NJ 07827 (973) 293-8171 uppermeadowsfarm.com